A place for couples dealing with illness to find resources and advice, hear stories, and discover support. Whether the illness is chronic or acute, the result of disease or accident, couples can learn strategies for coping with the changes illness brings into our relationships and our worlds.
The information provided in this blog is for educational and support purposes only. It should not be used as a substitute for seeking professional care.

Friday, October 10, 2008

When it's Too Late to Change Your Relationship

My father has had a desperate year.

Before he turned 83, he went swimming every day and sat by the pool for hours "schmoozing" with neighbors from his condo building. He bragged that he was the youngest guy in his synagogue and therefore often had the honor of carrying the twenty pound torah scroll. He told stories about the old days -- spending his war years on a battleship in China, playing stickball on the streets of Brooklyn as a kid, running errands for a nickel for the Murder, Incorporated gang that owned his neighborhood, and meeting my mother and being overcome by her dark beauty.

This year, he has lived more in rehab facilities than in the condo he shares with my mother. He started falling. He fell four times within six months. One day he got into a car accident. He had successful back surgery to insert metal pins along his spine to brace a few fractured discs. His pain is waning and his spirit is returning. But he has 24 hour home health aide coverage and needs to be shepherded when he turns over in his hospital bed, takes a shower, or tries to walk.

His voice is now an old man's voice, hoarse and tired. It often fades by the time he gets to the end of a sentence. He remembers everything clearly but just loses interest in the details. The thought of getting back into the pool and swimming again keeps him going.

My mother is holding steady with her afflictions and her medications. She carries on with reading her mystery books and tending to the building's library. Her social network consists largely of her doctors, the doormen, and her brothers. She cooks meals and sorts through paperwork. She lets the aides do everything else for my father.

My parents orbit around each other. Sometimes they collide in affection; other times in hostility; but mostly in neutral cooperation. This pattern is no different than the one they existed within for the past fifty years.

I watch with a heavy heart. I know that they will never find a love that has at its core something sublime instead of just complacency. I see that they will never find the others hands hidden in the mountain of ashes left by their disappointments in each other.

It's too late and they are too sick to change a relationship this old.

No comments:

Available at Amazon and local bookstores Click on Book to Learn More

About Me

In November, 1999 I was whacked with a mysterious chronic pain syndrome that took me out of my life. With the help of my husband, my dog, and a combination of western and alternative approaches, I have a new life that includes working, writing, mountain climbing, smiling, and managing pain. I learned a lot along the way, especially about illness and the couple relationship. I'm also a psychotherapist, a business consultant, and have written a book about couples and illness, which was published in March 2013 (Roundtree Press)

“Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”Susan Sontag